What's the Difference Between Hacker and Tech Geeker?

By Xah Lee. Date: 2012-01-17

in short, a tech geeker is a hacker who is completely ignorant of social sciences.

to give some example using programing celebrities: Richard
Stallman (RMS), Paul Graham, Jamie W Zawinski (JWZ), Eric S Raymond (ESR), Michael
DeGusta, Kent Pitman, are hackers, but they are not tech geekers,
because they have done things that require significant involvement
with society (For example, started company or organization), even if their
stance is extreme (compare to politicians: actor-turned-politician
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Regan, silver-spoon scumbag George W
Bush.).

in contrast, vast majority of elite coders who slave on comp.lang newsgroups, are tech geekers.

What's some example of tech geeker who are famous? I think Tom Christiansen, Linus Torvalds, Rob Pike, Dennis Ritchie, are good examples.

of course, in general, i despise tech geekers, and also majority of hackers, with rare exceptions (For example, i like Jamie Zawinski, Michael DeGusta, Bill Gosper, …).

note that there are a lot expert programers who are not hackers (thus nor tech geekers). For example, most academic computer scientists are such. Celebrity examples: John McCarthy, Donald Knuth, Edsger W Dijkstra, Guy Steele, … and also lots who are not academicians or not always academicians, for example, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Richard P Gabriel (RPG), Stephen Wolfram etc.